Before heading to downtown Portland for a Friday of antique and vintage shopping, we stopped into Baker and Spice on Capitol Highway, which was just down the road from our guest house. We sat in a cozy corner with café au laits, a chocolate croissant, and a savory scone. It was pretty well packed inside, with the friendly feel of a local community hub. This was the one day we had encountered all week in Portland where the sky was overcast and threatening lots of rain, so it made for the perfect time to explore more indoor shops.

We had a list of recommended vintage ones to check out. We didn’t make it to all of them, but of the handful we did check out, our favorites were Vintage Vendors (2800 NE Sandy Blvd) and House of Vintage (3315 SE Hawthorne Blvd).

House of Vintage is huge and they have a ton of clothing and kitschy retro goods to rifle through. It really started to pour down while we were inside, so we took our time and waited out the rain by searching for treasures. Somehow, we managed not to find anything that we absolutely had to take home with us. I think that on this vintage shopping trip, we were both looking for very particular pieces.

Vintage Vendors had more actual antiques in their shop. The store is divided up into individual vendors’ sections, so the prices vary from one area to another. One booth had a vintage banana crate with bold graphics, something that would have made an awesome coffee table (we have a banana crate in our bathroom at home, which we turned into a stand for towels and toiletries).

In total, we made a pretty full morning and afternoon by stopping into about five different shops. We didn’t make it to Antique Alley, Red Light Clothing, or Naked City. Those will have to wait until the next time we are back in Portland. Another one we stopped into, Hollywood Vintage, really had more costumes than vintage, but their selection of eyeglasses was impressive. I saw Sarah admiring a few pairs of 1920s spectacles. Suddenly, she is very interested in getting herself some reading glasses!

In our minds, there was only one place to go to for lunch on our last day in Portland: the legendary Cartopia! Throughout this entire trip, I was guilty of taking every opportunity I had to stop at any food cart that caught my eye. I especially wasn’t going to miss out on eating here since this particular lot’s days are numbered (at least for the time being; hopefully, things work out). It was early afternoon and only half of the Cartopia food trucks were open; still, they were exactly the ones we had been craving. First, we ordered a crepe with plantains, dulce de leche, rum, and butter from Perierra Crêperie. They made it fresh right when we ordered, and it was delicious!

Our second course was an amped-up peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich from PBJ’s Grilled. The Hot Hood sammies have peanut butter, bacon, jalapeños, and cherries, all between two buttery, grilled slices of challah bread. It shouldn’t have been that good, but it was. It was incredible. The photos are making us hungry even as we write this:

After lunch, Sarah and I made a pilgrimage to Fred Meyer, which turned out to be more of a mall-sized Walmart than a regular grocery store. We picked up some road trip food, Tillamook yogurts, a variety of chocolate bars, and salmon chowder for dinner. We were both starting to feel melancholy about leaving in the morning.

The rest of the evening we packed everything, washed our stinky beach finds, and took a fairly long, peaceful walk around our immediate neighborhood and the surrounding ones. People always talk about how a long trip makes one eager to get back home to a normal routine. But this trip had the complete opposite effect. Both of us were still eager to explore more of Oregon and we felt bummed that we had run out of days. The only consolation we had was that we were taking three days to get home instead of two, which meant that we could have longer, more interesting stops.

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